Seduction. It's a word with bawdy connotations these days—the Internet teeming with sites on how to get more women in bed, promising the would-be seducer varied fulfillments of a monotonous urge. It's as if these men want to do the most animalistic thing they can without breaking the law. More women, it doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter how, and it really doesn't matter who. Don't get me wrong, I'm a flesh-and-blood man myself; I count porn among my entertainments (not the degrading kind, of course), and I'm no stranger to lascivious thoughts upon seeing a particularly nubile woman out on the street. I know that if the chemistry is right, I can approach that woman, and we can have a drink, and one thing can lead to another; but I'm not going to be chauvinist enough to think upon it as a conquest, to label it seduction as though I had achieved a victory of ego. No, sex is sex—and seduction, well, I define it like this. One part pent-up longing, one part hope against hope; a broad sweeping gesture of desire on a canvas quietly washed with awe. It is the shape erotic love takes sooner or later.
Love is another word sullied with careless use. The Greeks distinguished four varieties of love, the greatest of which was agape, or disinterested charity, a word then appropriated to describe the Christian spirit of universal love to the point of self-sacrifice. I admit to having been moved by Guido Reni's painting of Jesus in his Passion, or by Sydney Carton's walk to the guillotine for his Lucie Manette. But somehow I believe that love ideally won't involve suicide, but rather ought to foster a mutual partnership for as long as is fruitful; and the tales of agape and self-sacrifice strike me as strangely cold and bloodless. You would suggest that chastity implies truer love? To hell with vaunting this notion of purity—this notion of dying from afar because one has forbidden oneself to make a move, to touch one's beloved. I refer you to John Donne: "Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, / But yet the body is his booke."
Seduction is not entirely a conscious act; though the man be the mover, he is moved himself. What it means is intent waiting. Listening. Not hesitating to respond.
She is waiting just inside the door, behind the pane of glass that lets passersby see the diners closest to the street. I have loved her since college, though we are now two years from our last passing through those ivy gates, and working in the clean grey town nearby: an adjustment to adult life that has replaced schoolboy days without fanfare and has yet to feel quite right to me. We are meeting for dinner, though only as old friends; we have never dated—she has never seemed interested. Who knows what factors determine a woman's attraction to a man: his chances to make a good living, and whether he is socially respectable, and whether she can imagine herself bringing him home to her parents, her trusted arbiters. For a man to love a woman is so much more simple; it is almost a command written in his genes, a two-word command: Choose One.
I chose her because she is brilliant. She is brilliant the way Iris Murdoch was on the night she met her husband-to-be, when after hours of conversation they simply knew. I feel that I knew, as well, although I must carry the knowledge alone like some Prometheus. She was one-of-a-kind, thoughtful, poetic, wise, and I dare not do injustice to her by comparing her to a flower, or a bird, or a statue of Venus, because she frankly surpassed metaphor. I skipped the admiration stage and fell directly into love.
I don't have any real idea of her feelings, or potential for feelings, or lack thereof; neither do I know if I could pass muster in her mind as a possible husband. All I know is how much it means to me to see her, to spend time with her, to interact and feel the potency in my lifeblood as we talk.
And we have another dinner, and we have another conversation: she is well, something frustrating happened at her job recently, her sister is pregnant and coming into town with her husband for a joyous visit. I look at her when she says the word "pregnant." I almost hold my breath, listening for embarrassment, for any tremor accompanying the concept as she is telling it to me. But I still cannot tell.
"Well, tell her my congratulations," I say.
"I've got to say that I'm a little envious," she responds. "She's only been married about a year. And she's only two years older than I am. I...this sounds silly, but I've actually started wondering when my life is going to move forward."
"Tired of the single life?" I keep my voice within the joking range.
She smiles, an oddly small smile for a joke, and falls silent. She falls silent! For a while we both sit there, neither of us speaking.
I reach across to where her hand is playing with her napkin. Skin brushes skin.
And then she clears her throat, removes that hand to take a sip of water from her glass, and says as if nothing had happened, "You know, I heard the funniest thing the other day."
Was it nervousness that made her retract? Surely there was something there in those moments; and so the chase of seduction, a dance from time immemorial, begins. It is beginning tonight.
"How about you tell me the story on our way to the movie theater after this?" I say, and signal to the waiter to bring our check. She pulls out her wallet to pay her half, and says, laughing with the spontaneity of it, "Alright."
I hold the door for her as we exit the restaurant, and listen to her Thank You. At the theater I look over the movie choices and pick something just right for setting the mood without being too cheesy.
We're sitting in our seats, the room is dark, and I edge my foot up against hers. The shoes meet and stay adjacent. I don't dare do more, but just leave it there; and occasionally, to make the point, I move my foot away to stretch the leg a little bit but then restore it quite purposely to its original spot. It's a good sign, I think, that she doesn't move that leg at all, not through the entire two hours.
"Hey," I say as we emerge into the cool night after the movie. It's the moment of truth: I have to catch her here, or else she goes home, and I can't bear to lose the momentum, even as slow and unsure as it has been tonight. Is there a platonic way to get her to come to my apartment? I don't dare make it an obvious advance, as I couldn't bear the risk of having her turn away, or worse, having her say she's tired and leave me wondering as to whether she's just making an excuse. So: "Hey, you know what would be really fun? Do you want to come over and play some video games? Y'know, relive the college days a little?"
"Yeah!" she says very quickly. And then in that utterly casual tone, like in the restaurant when her hand moved away, she goes on: "I haven't seen your apartment in a while. I'd forgotten that you had X-Box all set up."
"Well, forget no more," I say, playing along with her just-friends tone. There'll be time for sexual tension later. And actually, once we start playing Starcraft, it really is just-friends for a while. Told you I was still a boy at heart.
